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The heart monitor beside my head began to beep faster, a frantic, shrill rhythm that climbed with my panic.

The light is gone.

The words hammered inside my skull until I thought my head would split in two. No more painting. No more colors. No more deep cobalt blues of the Atlantic or the fiery cadmium reds I loved to splash across canvas.

I began to thrash against the leather restraints, my heels kicking wildly beneath the stiff hospital sheets, my fingernails clawing at the mattress. The pain in my face detonated, white fire exploding behind my bandage-wrapped sockets, threatening to drag me under into eternal madness.

"Sedate her!" a sharp, unfamiliar voice shouted from the doorway.

Rubber-soled shoes squeaked frantically across the linoleum. Hands grabbed my shoulders, trying to pin me down.

Then, a sudden, terrifying shift cracked through the room.

The sound of a heavy steel door slamming open against the wall echoed like thunder. The hurried footsteps of the nurses froze in mid-stride.

A voice, low, velvety, and laced with raw venom, cut through the chemical haze of my panic like a scalpel.

"Get your fucking hands off my wife."

The room temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees in an instant.

I didn't recognize the title. I didn't know what "wife" meant, nor did my drug-addled brain have the capacity to care. But the sound of that voice stirred something deep inside me. It was deep and dark, carrying that faint Italian cadence that I had heard in my father's courtyard when I was eighteen, the day I dropped my paintbrush in the grass.

Romeo.

Heavy, unhurried leather footsteps clicked across the floor, stopping right at the edge of my bed.

The hands holding me down vanished as if struck by lightning.

"Out," Romeo commanded, his voice barely above a whisper, yet carrying the weight of a firing squad. "All of you. Outside the door. If anyone steps into this room without my explicit permission, Tony will put a bullet through their skull. Move."

I heard the frantic rustle of lab coats and the rapid shuffle of medical staff fleeing the room, followed by the heavy thud of the door sealing shut.

My chest heaved in ragged, desperate gasps. The monitor shrieked, my pulse racing at a hundred and forty beats a minute, my body shivering violently from the cold terror of the dark.

A large, heavy hand, warm as summer sun and rough with callouses, settled gently over my forehead.

His fingers were so careful, so impossibly soft against the edge of my medical bandages, that my thrashing stopped instantly. The scent of him washed over me, cutting through the bleach, the iodine, and the sickness: dark leather, rich cedar, and that trace of sweet cinnamon.

"I've got you, Kitten," he whispered.

His other hand found my bound left wrist. I heard the sharp, clean snip of a pocketknife blade slicing through the heavy leather strap, setting my hand free.

He didn't let my hand drop. He gathered my trembling fingers in his massive palm, lifting my knuckles to his mouth. His lips were soft and warm, pressing a hard, lingering kiss to the back of my hand, right over the bandage covering my IV needle.

"Romeo..." my voice cracked, dry as desert sand, barely audible over the hum of the oxygen pump.

"I'm right here, Iris," he murmured, his breath ghosting over my feverish skin.

He sat down on the edge of the mattress, his heavy weight dipping the bed, pulling my upper body gently against his broad chest. His arms wrapped around me, solid as an iron fortress, shielding my broken, bandaged body.

"It's all dark," I sobbed into his neck, tears soaking into his starched shirt collar, stinging the raw burns on my face. "Romeo, I can't see anything. I'm blind. Everything is gone."

"No, Pet," he growled softly into my hair, his lips brushing the edge of the medical gauze. His large hand smoothed down my back, over and over in a steady, hypnotic rhythm, grounding me in the void. "The world is still out there. And I will never let the shadows touch you again."

"Why are you here?" I whimpered, my fingers curling weakly into the fabric of his lapel. "Why did you come?"

Romeo paused. I could feel his heart hammering against my cheek, heavy, fierce, and erratic, like a caged beast pacing behind iron bars.